Hamburg comprehensibility concept

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The Hamburg concept of intelligibility was developed in the early 1970s at the University of Hamburg by the psychologists Reinhard Tausch , Inghard Langer and Friedemann Schulz von Thun . According to this, the comprehensibility of a factual text depends on four text characteristics: simplicity, structure / order, brevity / conciseness and additional suggestions. The authors conducted several empirical studies to support this claim. For language consultants, the concept has become something of a standard in German-speaking countries since the 1980s. However, cognitive scientists and linguists have significant reservations. The underlying book “Expressing Yourself Understandably” was published in 2015 in its 10th edition.

description

The concept is based on the following notion: if readers do not understand a text, it is less because the facts described are too complicated. Rather, it is the type of formulation to blame. If the author had phrased it differently, the reader would have understood him better. It shows how four text features determine the extent of comprehensibility (hereinafter referred to as the “intelligibility model”), as well as training in understandable writing, beneficial personal attitudes and attitudes of the writer and the scientific studies on which all of this is based.

The four characteristics of intelligibility

Texts that are easy and difficult to understand differ in a number of individual features. The Hamburg model summarizes them in four groups. They are called "intelligibility features". They are called simplicity, structure / order, brevity / conciseness and stimulating additions.

Simplicity means: the author uses common words that every reader knows, preferably concrete, clear, "living" words. If unusual expressions cannot be avoided, they are explained. The sentences are short. Subordinate clauses come before or after main clauses, not in the middle.

Structure / order: At the beginning the author makes it clear what it is about. He puts the individual points of view in a meaningful order and clarifies how the sentences relate to one another. This inner order of the text is reflected in the outer structure - through paragraphs, subheadings, emphasis, and summaries.

Shortness / conciseness: In the case of extreme brevity / conciseness, every word is necessary. The opposite is verbosity. Best for clarity: short, but not extremely short. A little redundancy, in other words the same thing again, is welcome.

Stimulating additions: The author uses small ingredients that bring the facts to life, encourage reading pleasure, and keep the reader engaged - even if the content is perhaps not that exciting. But this is done sparingly so that the essentials are not lost in the accessories.

These descriptions are made clear by numerous commented example texts, which make up a large part of the book "Express yourself intelligibly". The authors are of the opinion that only through these examples can one get a feel for what the four characteristics really mean. Not only the description, but above all the experience of simplicity, structure / order etc. should make the reader understand what is meant by it.

Assessment of the intelligibility features

There are gradations between "extremely easy to understand" and "completely incomprehensible". In the Hamburg intelligibility model, each intelligibility feature is rated on a scale from +2 to −2. +2 means: The text is marked to a very large extent by the feature. For example, it's very simple. −2 means the extreme opposite, the text is very complicated. +1, 0 and −1 are intermediate levels.

Not all features are equally important for comprehensibility. Most important: simplicity and structure / order. The optimum is +2. In the case of brevity / conciseness, both extremes inhibit understanding, the optimum is more in the middle, between +1 and 0. The least important are stimulating additions. They can even be harmful if they are at the expense of brevity / conciseness or if they are poorly structured / tidy add to the confusion. The optimum is usually between +1 and 0.

training

A systematic training program takes up more space in the book on the Hamburg model. It should enable understandable writing in the sense of the model. You can do it on your own (duration about 10 hours). It will probably bring greater success in a seminar under supervision. It consists of three steps:

1st step - get to know the characteristics of comprehensibility: The four characteristics are presented and made tangible through examples. The assignment of individual properties (e.g. “many subordinate clauses”) to complex characteristics (“simplicity”) is practiced.

Step 2 - perceive the characteristics: The training participant assesses given texts first according to individual, then according to all four characteristics of intelligibility. He uses the ratings from +2 to −2 described above. As feedback he receives the judgments of comprehensibility experts. This part of the training is intended to refine perception and train the diagnostic eye for strengths and weaknesses of a text. The participant should get a sense of why a text is more or less understandable.

3rd step - realize the characteristics: The participant tries to improve the given texts - first in one, then in all characteristics. The last task is to write your own texts on a given topic. As feedback, there are sample solutions that were created by comprehensibility experts.

Characteristic of the program: It does not consist of a multitude of detailed rules that one should observe - rules such as “avoid substantiated verbs”, “do not use double genitives”, “be careful with negative expressions” etc. According to the authors, one learns to write understandably ideally differently, namely by imitating role models (model learning) and feedback (learning from success).

The benefits of this training were examined in three studies. Teachers, pupils (9th / 10th grade) and trade unionists were trained under scientific observation. Programs were used that had been tailored to the respective target group. According to this, no more than 20 percent of the participants were able to produce easily understandable texts without training; after the exercise program it was up to 70 percent. This also increased the performance of the readers: the students with texts by trained authors achieved 67 percent of the possible points for the teaching objective. In contrast, students with texts by untrained authors only achieved 11 percent.

Conducive attitudes

The Hamburg psychologists are of the opinion that the training is more successful if the authors have certain inner attitudes. this includes:

Attention-appreciation-consideration: the writer respects the reader as a person, tries to establish a personal relationship with the reader, wants to help the reader, takes the difficulties and needs of the reader seriously.

Empathy and understanding of thoughts and feelings: The author tries to put himself in the position of the reader, to understand the thoughts, feelings and difficulties.

Sincerity - clarification of your own thoughts - self-opening: The author renounces professional behavior, is unaffected. What he writes corresponds to what he thinks. He does not hide personal statements behind alleged objectivity. He shows himself where appropriate, as a person.

These attitudes should strengthen the desire and the effort to express oneself in an easily understandable manner. They promote target group orientation and the consideration of reader expectations for different types of text . As an additional stimulus, self-opening by the author can make reading interesting and, beyond the mere understanding, promote the intellectual examination of the text (of course not in the case of instructions for use, official texts, etc., where the person of the author is irrelevant).

A study on person-centered writing showed that the majority of readers (over 800 adults in various professions, students in the 9th and 10th secondary school grades and teachers) of eight texts in two versions preferred the clearly person-centered version in direct comparison. This form often led to significantly higher levels of knowledge and understanding. It particularly encouraged the reader to deal with the text mentally and emotionally.

Creation of the Hamburg model

In the course of his teaching research, Reinhard Tausch had the impression that school books and linguistic statements by teachers were often not understandable enough - not because of the difficulty of the content, but because of the type of formulation. That gave the impetus for a series of research projects in 1969. They pursued a very practical goal: to give authors and teachers scientifically founded advice on how to express themselves more clearly and thus achieve greater learning success for students. In a second step, the model was then tested on texts for the general population - texts that every person will come into contact with in the course of their life, e.g. B. Letters from authorities, instructions for use, etc.

Studies with lists of characteristics and factor analyzes

The first three studies included a total of 162 different texts on eight topics. 380 assessors and almost 1,500 students were involved. With certain variations, the studies basically proceeded as follows:

Writing texts: teachers, prospective teachers (trainee students), psychologists or students (pedagogy, psychology) created texts. They should be suitable for ten to twelve year old students. The topics were given. Examples: making a drawing of geometric figures, identifying criminal offenses in short case studies, bisecting an angle with a compass and ruler.

List feature pairs: Lists of feature pairs have been compiled that relate to the intelligibility of texts. Examples: long-winded - limited to the essentials, vivid - non-illustrative, words familiar to schoolchildren - unfamiliar words. There were various lists with 12 to 19 such pairs of characteristics. The selection took into account suggestions from earlier research literature, in some cases also information from qualitative interviews with the target group, the students.

Assess texts: All pairs of characteristics were put into scale form, e.g. B: so: 

anschaulich	+ + +	+ + 	+	0	-	- -	- - -	 unanschaulich

Assessment groups (students) ticked a value for each text. The mean value of the assessment group was formed from these values ​​for each text and characteristic.

Summarizing characteristics: Certain patterns emerged in the assessments: Some characteristics often occurred together. Example: If texts were assessed as being particularly “consistent”, they were often also “strongly structured” and “clear”. With a special statistical method, factor analysis , four such patterns of common features could be traced. They were called "the four dimensions of intelligibility".

Pupils test: Pupils read the various texts and then had to solve tasks that were supposed to show what they had understood and remembered from the text.

Check the correlation: Find out how student performance relates to dimensions of comprehensibility.

The authors state that the main result of these studies is that the comprehensibility of information texts can be characterized by the four dimensions. The performance of the students is better if the texts show more favorable values ​​in the four dimensions.

Studies with a concept-oriented rating

There were three innovations in these studies:

  • Original texts from various sources are compared with improved versions of these texts. Improved means: Text versions that are supposed to achieve the same information goal taking into account the four characteristics.
  • Not only texts for schoolchildren, but mainly for adults are examined.
  • The four characteristics were assessed directly - without going through the lists of characteristic pairs, factor analyzes and calculating with factor values.

A few explanations about this direct assessment: The assessors were given the four characteristics in the form described above. In order to be able to assess the intelligibility features reliably and in accordance with the concept, they had to go through thorough training beforehand. So it was not up to their intuition how they came to their judgments, but they were systematically trained to understand and apply the concept as its authors had intended. They learned to clearly perceive the texts in the four characteristics and to express their impressions in scale values. The training looks by and large as described above, only that no texts have been improved. After completing the training, the future raters had to pass an exam.

The same text is always judged by several raters, in the following studies there are five to ten. They submit their assessments independently of one another, in a secret ballot, so to speak. They do not know whether they are looking at an original text or an improved version (blind experiment). Nobody knows the judgments of his fellow counselors. Everyone has to rely entirely on their own judgment, uninfluenced by the others. Only if their judgments agree well (there are certain statistical formulas for this ), an average is formed from their judgments . This is considered the best available estimate for the "true" characteristic value. The apparently so disruptive subjectivity of the rating process can thus be kept within harmless limits by such training of the raters, compliance with which is statistically controlled. Two of the three Hamburg psychologists have written their own book on these questions. They call the process “concept-oriented rating”.

The four studies essentially followed the same pattern: Selecting texts, producing optimized text versions according to the four characteristics, having all texts assessed by trained guessers, giving the texts to readers, assigning the readers tasks to the texts and finally checking how the four characteristics compare with the Knowledge and ability of the reader are related. A total of 28 texts were examined in two versions each, over 1100 readers took part, including almost 600 students from the three major types of schools at the time and a good 500 adults, most of them employed. The texts comprised a colorful bouquet of topics and types of text . Sources were among other things school books, law books, entries from specialist encyclopedias, the Federal Agency for Political Education, insurance conditions, advice sheet for income tax payers, sales contracts, scientific studies.

The Hamburg psychologists conclude from the results: The concept-oriented rating works - the texts could be assessed reliably (technical term: reliable ) and model-based ( valid ) by trained assessors. All original texts could be improved in line with the model. This had largely positive effects on understanding and retention: According to a classification that is frequently used today, the effects were "large" for around half of the texts and "small" or "medium" for a quarter. However, there was no impact on test performance in another quarter. The authors attribute this to the fact that the improvements were not big enough, e.g. B. because the original texts did not have that many serious flaws in comprehensibility. It was clear that the greater the text improvement, the greater the gain in understanding and remembering. As a rule of thumb, the following is stated: If you take the two most important intelligibility factors - simplicity and structure - order together, improving the text pays off if you succeed in raising the text over at least three scale levels.

Readers with a higher level of intelligence or a higher school leaving certificate scored higher in all text forms. But all groups benefited to the same extent from improvements in intelligibility. Elementary school ( secondary school students ) achieved the same benefits as in the improved texts high school students with the originals. Texts also trigger emotional reactions in the reader. This is where the originals and improvements are not so different. If there were any differences, it was in favor of the improved texts.

reception

The concept has met with a mixed response. In simple terms: highly praised by practitioners, heavily criticized by theorists.

positive reviews

The Hamburg model is highly valued by consultants and seminar leaders. In the last few decades it has developed into a "quasi-standard" that is "unrivaled". The reasons given for the great success in practical implementation are:

The model works in practice: Those who deal with it and complete the training program are likely to write texts that are well understood by the readers. This is shown by the research results as well as experience reports. With this, the authors have certainly achieved their main goal.

It combines diagnosis and therapy in a simple way: The four assessments show immediately in which feature improvements are necessary.

It does not require any previous linguistic knowledge: you do not even need to have knowledge of school grammar. Expressions that appear frequently in popular guidebook literature - active / passive , subject and predicate , nominal style , genitive attribute, etc. Ä.– you don't have to know about the Hamburg model.

It includes the essential features of comprehensibility: Other models also come to similar or largely identical "dimensions", e. B. Groeben , Göpferich or Lutz, albeit in different ways or with various extensions.

It is simple, plausible and differentiating: it enables a differentiating perspective, which, however, with the four characteristics does not get lost in too many details and thus becomes impractical and uneconomical.

It is open to expanded differentiations and analyzes: If appropriate, seminars can be used to discuss how substantiated verbs or double negations influence the characteristic of simplicity, how external structure and internal order are related, what influence the target group has or how stimulating with different types of text Additions could look like.

criticism

The Hamburg concept of comprehensibility has been criticized particularly from the cognitive and linguistic side. The practical usability is not so much questioned, but above all the lack of connection to theoretical knowledge is criticized. There was no fruitful dialogue between the concept developers and their critics. The Hamburg psychologists have not dealt with the criticism in detail or systematically. The critics, on the other hand, mostly only refer to the first editions of the book and do not consider additions to the higher editions or explanations that have appeared in individual journal articles. A balanced presentation of the most frequently mentioned points of criticism as well as some counter-arguments can be found in Lutz. The following section is based on this.

The reader does not appear: This criticism aims to ensure that the prior knowledge of the reader, his reading competence , his interests do not play a role in the Hamburg model. At the latest with the higher editions of the book and with the chapter on person-centered writing - hardly received by the critics - the accusation no longer applies. The writer is asked to put himself in the intellectual world of the typical targeted reader, to familiarize himself with the way the recipient speaks, what prior knowledge he usually brings with him, what he would like to know, what expectations he has of formal aspects of the Has text. Schulz von Thun speaks of "cognitive empathy " here, describing it as the basis of comprehensibility. Target group orientation, consideration of text types with their conventions , presentation of the facts in appropriate complexity or meaningful simplification of the content - all of this can be taken into account.

Findings from (text) linguistics and terminology research are not taken into account: That is true. However, significant contributions from linguistics at the time the model was created in the early 1970s had hardly been published. In 1979 it didn't even seem clear that comprehensibility was an issue in linguistics at all. Taking into account today's linguistic knowledge, e.g. B. about cohesion / coherence of texts, some things could be described more precisely, e.g. B. the characteristic structure-order.

The model is not justified theoretically: the Hamburg psychologists have only considered a few theoretical works by other researchers in their model, for example Ausubel's “ advance organizer ”. Another source was more important to them: “We were guided by a very simple theory: readers know what makes it easier or more difficult for them to read, understand and retain texts. We wanted to record, organize, communicate and apply this knowledge. ”The theoretically derived model by Groeben , which was created around the same time, looks very similar to the Hamburg model.

The dimensions (feature bundles) are not exactly defined / operationalized and not independent of each other: The critics criticize the fact that the original 18 pairs of opposites, on which some factor analyzes were based, were put together ad hoc and relatively arbitrarily. Other couples might have found different factors. Here one could counter that the final model was no longer strictly based on the factor analysis of these pairs of characteristics. This only served as a concept development aid. - There is no strict definition of the characteristics in the traditional sense. The Hamburg authors believe that the meaning of the characteristics will be sufficiently clear from the many sample texts. - Content-related interdependencies of the characteristics are obvious, e.g. B. between conciseness and simplicity as well as additional suggestions: Simple texts are a little longer, more suggestions also lead to longer texts. Statistically, there were connections between simplicity and structure / order. Schulz von Thun states that around 75 percent of the variance is independent in each case , so that assessments of four characteristics remain justified.

The model does not provide any concrete instructions for improving texts: the concept developers have deliberately avoided this. They are of the opinion that such instructions should be very numerous and thus lose their practicality. Instead, they rely on a wealth of exemplary model texts. As the results of the training program show, this model learning is actually effective.

Criticism of the rating procedure: It is criticized that rating procedures are too subjective and say more about the raters than about the objects assessed. The Hamburgers, on the other hand, believe that their version of the rating, the so-called concept-oriented rating, keeps the degree of subjectivity within acceptable and controlled limits.

There is no distinction between understanding and retention: The measurement of understanding is generally considered difficult, as understanding cannot be observed directly. All the methods used so far have their weaknesses. With some of the methods used by the Hamburg comprehensibility researchers, you can do well just by memory, even if you haven't understood much of the content. The improved text versions may not make it easier to understand, they are just easier to remember. How far this is actually the case cannot be decided. With some of the methods used - applying the information to new examples, correctly filling out a form, solving mathematical problems with a newly learned method - mere remembering without understanding would not be sufficient.

The model does not take into account the visual design of texts: Apart from paragraphs and subheadings, there are no design elements in the sample texts that could contribute to clarity. There are no examples of understandable graphics, illustrations, boxes, etc. Their role was not investigated in the studies either. However, this criticism applies to most psychological and linguistic models.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ : Inghard Langer, Friedemann Schulz von Thun, Reinhard exchange express yourself understood . 10th edition. Ernst-Reinhard Verlag, Munich / Basel 2015, ISBN 978-3-497-02532-9 .
  2. ↑ Friedemann Schulz von Thun, Wolfgang Götz: Mathematics explain understandably . Urban and Fischer, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-541-40001-3 .
  3. ^ Friedemann Schulz von Thun, Inghard Langer, Reinhard Tausch, Martina Eckelmann, Michael Grüner, Rainer Straub: Training program for educators: To promote comprehensibility in the transfer of knowledge . In: Landesverband der Volkshochschulen Schleswig-Holstein (Ed.): Worksheet . 2nd Edition. tape 5 . Kiel 1973.
  4. ^ Friedemann Schulz von Thun, Jochen Enkemann, Heribert Leßmann, Wolfgang Steller: Understandably inform and write. German training program for students . Herder, Freiburg i. Br. 1987.
  5. ↑ Jochen Enkemann, Heribert Leßmann, Wolfgang Steller, Friedemann Schulz von Thun: Understandable information and writing - Teacher's instructions for the German training program . Herder, Freiburg i. Br. 1975.
  6. ↑ These three so-called person-centered attitudes were first described in a similar form by the American psychologist Carl Rogers in the context of psychotherapy. They later also proved to be effective in the relationship between parent-educator-teachers and children and adolescents, and also in marriage and partnership and, more generally, in people living together. Reinhard Tausch has largely dedicated his research life to this topic.
  7. ↑ Marlen Bartels: Person-centered design of texts and their effects on understanding and retention . In: Michael Behr, Ulrich Esser, Franz Petermann, Wolfgang M. Pfeiffer, Reinhard Tausch (eds.): Yearbook 1992 for person-centered psychology and psychotherapy . tape 3 . GwG-Verlag, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-926842-09-1 , p. 144-161 .
  8. ↑ a b c d Inghard Langer: Informing understandably - an example of empirical research . In: Bernd Fittkau (Hrsg.): Pedagogical-psychological aids for education, teaching and counseling . tape 2 . Hahner Verlagsgesellschaft, Aachen 1993, ISBN 3-89294-033-9 , p. 378-401 .
  9. ↑ Inghard Langer, Reinhard Tausch: Factors of the linguistic design of knowledge information and their effects on the understanding performance of students . In: School and Psychology . tape 18 , 1972, p. 72-80 .
  10. ↑ Inghard Langer, Friedemann Schulz von Thun, Jörg Meffert, Reinhard exchange: characteristics of understandability of written information and educational texts . In: Journal for Experimental and Applied Psychology . tape 20 , 1973, ISSN  0044-2712 , pp. 269-286 .
  11. ↑ Ingrid Steinbach, Inghard Langer, Reinhard Tausch: Characteristics of knowledge and information texts in connection with learning effectiveness . In: Journal for Developmental Psychology and Educational Psychology . tape 4 , no. 2 , 1972, ISSN  0049-8637 , p. 130-139 .
  12. ↑ a b Inghard Langer, Friedemann Schulz of tuna: measurement of complex traits in Psychology and Education: Rating method . Ernst Reinhard, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-497-00741-2 . (Republished in the series Standard Works from Psychology and Pedagogy - Reprints , Waxmann, Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-8309-1758-8 )
  13. ↑ Friedemann Schulz von Thun, Gerhild Göbel, Reinhard Tausch: Improvement of the comprehensibility of textbooks and effects on the understanding and retention of different groups of students . In: Psychology in Education and Teaching . tape 20 , 1973, ISSN  0342-183X , p. 223-234 .
  14. ↑ Friedemann Schulz von Thun: Comprehensibility of information texts: measurement, improvement and validation . In: Journal of Social Psychology . tape 5 , no. 5 , 1974, ISSN  0044-3514 , pp. 124-132 .
  15. ^ Friedemann Schulz von Thun, Barbara Weitzmann, Inghard Langer, Reinhard Tausch: Review of a theory of comprehensibility based on informational texts from public life . In: Journal for Experimental and Applied Psychology . tape 21 , no. 1 , 1974, ISSN  0044-2712 , pp. 162-179 .
  16. ^ Friedemann Schulz von Thun, Marita von Berghes, Inghard Langer, Reinhard Tausch: Review of a theory of the comprehensibility of short summaries of scientific publications . In: Journal for Developmental Psychology and Educational Psychology . tape 6 , no. 3 , 1974, ISSN  0049-8637 , p. 192-206 .
  17. ^ Jacob Cohen: Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences . 2nd Edition. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ 1988, ISBN 0-8058-0283-5 .
  18. ^ Friedemann Schulz von Thun: Informing. Difficult to understand when conveying information. The Hamburg intelligibility concept . In: Psychology Today . No. 5 , 1975, ISSN  0340-1677 , pp. 42-51 . (Reprinted under the title Understandably Informing in the magazine Technische Kommunikation , Issue 3, 2015, ISSN 1436-1809)
  19. ↑ Benedikt Lutz: Comprehensibility research transdisciplinary. Plea for a user-friendly knowledge society . V & R unipress, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0453-7 , p. 92 .
  20. ↑ Andreas Baumert: Writing professionally. Tips and techniques for everyday work . dtv, Munich 2003, ISBN 978-3-423-50868-1 , p. 33 . (Quoted from Benedikt Lutz: Understandability research transdisciplinary. Plea for a user-friendly knowledge society. V & R unipress, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0453-7 , p. 92)
  21. ↑ Benedikt Lutz: Comprehensibility research transdisciplinary. Plea for a user-friendly knowledge society . V & R unipress, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0453-7 , p. 92-94 .
  22. ↑ Benedikt Lutz: Comprehensibility research transdisciplinary. Plea for a user-friendly knowledge society . V & R unipress, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0453-7 , p. 99-102 .
  23. ↑ Marlen Bartels: On the Hamburg concept of comprehensibility - my experience with it over the past 30 years . In: Inghard Langer (Ed.): Humanity and Science. Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Reinhard Tausch . GwG-Verlag, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-926842-33-4 , p. 399-412 .
  24. ^ A b Norbert Groeben: The comprehensibility of teaching texts: dimensions and criteria of receptive learning stages . 2nd revised and expanded edition. Aschendorff, Münster 1978, ISBN 3-402-04020-4 .
  25. ↑ Susanne Göpferich: From Hamburg to Karlsruhe: A communication-oriented frame of reference for evaluating the comprehensibility of texts . In: technical language . tape 23 , no. 3–4 , 2001, ISSN  1017-3285 , pp. 117-138 .
  26. ↑ Benedikt Lutz: Comprehensibility research transdisciplinary. Plea for a user-friendly knowledge society . V & R unipress, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0453-7 .
  27. ↑ Benedikt Lutz: Comprehensibility research transdisciplinary. Plea for a user-friendly knowledge society . V & R unipress, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0453-7 , p. 95-98 .
  28. ↑ Berhard Pörksen, Friedemann Schulz von Thun: Communication as the art of living. Philosophy and practice of talking to one another . 2nd Edition. Carl Auer Systems, Heidelberg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8497-0173-4 , p. 44 .
  29. ↑ Hans Jürgen Heringer: Comprehensibility - a genuine research area in linguistics? In: Journal for German Linguistics . tape 7 , no. 3 , 1979, ISSN  0301-3294 , pp. 255-278 .
  30. ↑ Jörg Hennig, Inghard Langer: "Understandability of texts can be learned." A conversation about the Hamburg intelligibility model . In: Jörg Hennig, Marita Tjarks-Sobhani (Ed.): Comprehensibility and usability of technical documentation . Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1999, ISBN 3-7950-0750-X , p. 64-77 . (Quoted from Benedikt Lutz: Understandability research transdisciplinary. Plea for a user-friendly knowledge society. V & R unipress, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0453-7 , p. 97)
  31. ↑ Inghard Langer, Friedemann Schulz von Thun: Measurement of complex characteristics in psychology and education: rating procedures . Ernst Reinhard, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-497-00741-2 . (Republished in the series Standard Works from Psychology and Pedagogy - Reprints , Waxmann, Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-8309-1758-8 ) p. 125.
  32. ^ Friedemann Schulz von Thun: Effectiveness and trainability of comprehensibility in the written communication of information. Dissertation, University of Hamburg, Department of Philosophy, Psychology, Social Sciences. Hamburg 1973.
  33. ↑ Inghard Langer, Friedemann Schulz von Thun: Measurement of complex characteristics in psychology and education: rating procedures . Ernst Reinhard, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-497-00741-2 . (Republished in the series Standard Works from Psychology and Pedagogy - Reprints , Waxmann, Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-8309-1758-8 ) p. 26.
  34. ↑ Manfred Hofer: Text Understanding: Between Theory and Praxeology . In: Educational Science . tape 4 , no. 2 , 1974, p. 143-150 .
  35. ↑ Ursula Christmann: Understanding and comprehensibility measurement. Methodical approaches in application research. In: Kent D. Lerch (ed.): The language of law 1: Understanding law. Understandability, misunderstanding and incomprehensibility of law . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2004, ISBN 3-11-018142-8 , pp. 33-62 .
  36. ↑ Benedikt Lutz: Comprehensibility research transdisciplinary. Plea for a user-friendly knowledge society . V & R unipress, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0453-7 , p. 94, 99 ff .